Friday, May 4, 2012

Real Estate Rumor and Gossip: Huguette Clark

The real estate gossip gals at The Wall Street Journal revealed in their Private Properties column this week that all three New York City co-operative apartments owned by famously reclusive and recently deceased copper mining heiress Huguette Clark are under contract, pending approval from the board.**

**If you'd like a good long look at all three of the floor plans for Huguette Clark's former digs at 907 Fifth Avenue, click here.

The 12th floor spread—a 14-room, half floor, park-facer with about 5,000 square feet—was listed in early March (2012) and went into contract less than a month later for—so the story goes—close to its $24,000,000 asking price.

Miz Clark's two other apartments on the 8th floor at 907 Fifth Avenue—where domestic doyenne Martha Stewart maintains a pied-a-terre—each measure in around 5,000 square feet. The adjacent units are not combined but together comprise one entire floor of the building. One, listed at $12,000,000, has 12 rooms (2 bedrooms, two bathrooms) and oblique park views, and the other, listed at $19,000,000, has 10 rooms (3 bedrooms and 6 full and 5 half bathrooms). Both eighth floor apartments have reportedly gone to contract for close to their respective asking prices that total $31,000,000.

No word has yet to reach Your Mama about the identity of the buyer looking to snatch up the 12th floor unit but Your Mama did hear earlier this week—and again this morning—from I.B. Uhrealestateuberinsider that the two 8th floor units are actually in contract with the same buyer: Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber bin Muhammad Al Thani, otherwise known as the Prime Minister of Qatar.

I.B. Uhrealestateuberinsider also dished that word on the Fifth Avenue real estate street is that the Qatari prime minister might also be interested in the acquisition of a trio contiguous residences on the 7th floor, currently listed as a group with an asking price of $25,000,000.

Should the prime minister pass muster with the building's board—he is not, according to I.B. Uhrealestateuberinsider, a shoe-in despite the fact he could probably buy up half of Fifth Avenue with the change he loses in the cushions of his sofa—and be given the go-ahead to purchase both of Huguette Clark's 8th floor units and the trio of apartments below he'd possess more than 15,000 contiguous square feet on two-park-facing floors with a staggering, pre-renovation room count of 40 (or more).

Just take a moment to think about that...40 or more rooms on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

The current asking prices put the combined asking price of the quintet of co-operative apartments at $56,000,000 with, according to listing information, combined maintenance and common charges that add up to $28,915 per month or, according to our rudimentary calculations on our bejeweled abacus, a heart-stopping $346,980 per annum. Have mercy! And that's just to keep the keys turning in the locks and does not include staffing fees, utilities, renovations and improvements, furnishings, mortgages and other expensive what-have-yous.

If you think $56,000,000 might be too much for a bunch of fixer uppers in upper Manhattan consider that the prime minister (allegedly) spent more than a quarter billion bucks building his 430-plus foot long boat, Al Mirqab, and several well-connected sources have repeatedly snitched to Your Mama that he paid Los Angeles-based billionaire Tom Gores a bracing $34,500,000 in December 2010 for three vacant—vacant!—hill top parcels that total more than 8 super-prime acres above the Bel-Air Country Club and once had a rose-tinted asking price of $65,000,000. We don't have any details about what the prime minister plans to do with the land but it's probably pretty safe to assume whatever he would build would be nothing short of monumentally scaled and immodestly palatial.

All just rumor and gossip, children, delicious rumor and gossip about the staggeringly profligate real estate ways of the global giga-rich.

I can not imagine the board approving the guy with seven names. The practical reason would be security, but the snooty boards motives will more than likely be the reason. Ecclestone may have a better chance of getting in..

My suggestion would be that the money from Ms. Clark's estate be given to the community of Butte, MT, and the surrounding areas, that are still suffering from the environment effects caused by the generation of her fortune.

Great article as always, but I'm curious where the one billion dollar figure for Al Mirqab came from. It's very easy for construction of these types of yachts to reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, but crossing the billion dollar mark is usually just speculation. It's almost impossible to know the true build cost of yachts like Al Miqab; very few people outside the owner, the owner's build rep, and one or two people at the yard really know what was spent, and it's rare for any of them to talk.

I bet there have been people waiting to buy these places for decades now. I hope and bet the board will not approve him, these people have no class or taste and are just vulgar with their money, well our money that they rape us on gas prices with. I believe this is the same jackass that buys up the best super cars in the world and paints them all the same turquoise color.

London made the mistake of welcoming them with open arms and they are like an infestation there now. They need to keep the Russians and the Chinese out of here also. We have sold off enough of our country to them and it needs to end. Enough is enough.

What I am saying is not PC but I don't care, it needs to be said. It turns my stomach to think that some of the best real estate in the world that was up kept by Hugette for decades could end up in the arms of people like this with no appreciation for it.

@Anonymous 8:58No, it does not need to be said. And it's not called PC, it's called racism. Perhaps you might want to find your very own island, so that you can control your demographic. You could even name it. Say, like, Ku Klux Cay.

1:14 I assume you are assuming that I am white which I may or may not be. I mentioned Russians as ones to keep out also, who last time I checked were all white, so your racism hypothesis might be just you know, garbage. If you are going to throw out terms, learn to use the correct ones and don't sound stupid.

Squabbling about Russians, Chinese, Arabs, source of fortune, charity or lack there of, etc. is silly. If those buyers want to make multi-million dollar investments in the most desired neighborhoods in the most desired American cities, let them...provided they pass the co-op board. Whatever.

Anyway, I'll always salivate to see the interiors. Perhaps as complete sets of rooms on an auction block sometime in the not too distant future. As always mama, with love.

3:36, you are scum, no one wants to be around or live around you. Go away. If your country is so great, go back there and live there.

Here is an idea, put your billions back into your own country so it does not look like a hellhole so you don't have to move to other places that are already nice. Instead of spending $50 million on a house, invest in the infrastructure of your country so your people don't live in squalor and have to pee in rivers and live on $5 a day.

The fact that I am shocked and disheartened by all the Chilluns' ethnic aspersions will not stop me from opening a Falafel stand in front of this building. I would love to see how the interior design pans out. This may be the first Snuff film in real estate pornography. I hope Hughette was cremated so she doesn't have to worry about the rollover.

The board wont approve it. To many issues with security and whatnot. If they were smart they WOULD approve it because that purchase essential lowers the number of units in the building by 4, therefor making the building much more exclusive.

My My My...looks like we have a jealous person on board. Sweetie, why can't you Americans buy your own beautiful real estate? Hmmm. I know why, because you guys are BROKE. Stop the jealousy, you can't afford to buy your own landmarks and beautiful buildings then WE WILL. Period! Good buy.

I can't wait to see what the prime minister does to his spectacular apartment.

The Qataris have been throwing serious money around recently. The royal family bought Harrods in London a few months back.

I agree with the others that the board will not approve of the sale for the standard security reasons and also because rich Gulf Arabs do not go anywhere without an entourage and the last thing the board wants is large entourages hogging the elevators or intimidating the ladies who lunch taking fluffy out for a walk.

Still, if he does by some miracle, get approved of by the board the apartments will all be completely redone in the typical rich Arabian gulf style: gilt, gilt and lots and lots of gilt. And marble. Tons of marble. Plenty of faux French furniture. No antiques, mind you, but the fake knockoffs. The decorative tastes of rich Gulf Arabs is like the 19th century robber barons - no taste and flaunt it baby!

That said, there is a tiny chance, perhaps 1%, that they might actually do a rather restrained very modernist renovation.

I didn't realize someone must have left Average Joe's cage open to let him run loose, frothing at the mouth and spewing his usual ethnic stereotypical nonsense.

The very idea that all "foreigners" (hello -- the only natives here were shunted to reservations long ago!) have vulgar, over-the-top tastes is simply anathema to the world city New York has always been.

My family was here to greet the Mayflower but that doesn't mean that every branch of the family was above plastic on the carpet & furniture...